Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** the special supplemental…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children (WIC) plays a vital role in the health and nutrition of eligible pregnant, post-partum, or breastfeeding women and their young children. The WIC workforce national strategy aims to cultivate comprehensive and sustained solutions for WIC workforce development to support WIC initiatives. Yet, the disaggregation of information on training/scholarships for WIC careers is an impediment to understanding the alignment between education/training programs, trainees and WIC agencies. There is minimal research on scholarships/training for trainees or individuals currently employed in WIC and seeking career advancement. This project aims to address barriers to recruitment and retentionof the WIC workforce by utilizing the epis (exploration, preparation, implementation, sustainment) framework, a comprehensive model used to guide research and practice in the implementation of programs and interventions. The proposed implementation research focuses on identifying, assessing, recommending and piloting effective scholarships and funding programs, for careers and career advancement in WIC and related fields. To achieve these objectives, the project will convene stakeholders using a delphi process which will inform the design and engineering of web scrapers to efficiently find and collate decentralized information related to scholarships/funding programs to support training/ credentialing of WIC staff. This information will be used to populate the nutrischolar online clearinghouse, a central resource scholarship/funding programs to support training/ credentialing of WIC staff, as well as train a nutrischolar chatbot to assist users in finding the information and learning about WIC career routes. A scholarship model based on best practices will be piloted. This implementation project aligns with the national WIC workforce strategy recommendation 2: develop long-term learning opportunities for frontline staff, supervisors, and managers.